Beer, C., Michael, C., and Todorovic, M. 2009. Visualizing Media Archives: A Case Study. Code4Lib Journal 6 (March 2009)
The WGBH Media Library and Archives is piloting an online media archive for scholarly research. In conversation with users, we have discovered they want to quickly pinpoint items relevant to their work and get an overview of collections and their relationships to other materials. To demonstrate the size and complexity of our collection to users in a meaningful way, WGBH is employing data visualization techniques to provide an interactive, graphical representation of the various relationships between items. This article discusses the techniques employed in implementing our relationship map, emphasizes the cataloging techniques required for this effort, and offers code and examples to spark discussion about ways to improve or extend this effort.